Many companies run employee engagement surveys annually and achieve great results. However after a few years it can become more and more difficult to increase those scores, leading to disappointment. It shouldn’t.

Stand back, look at the overall picture and concentrate on the fact that you’ve done terrifically well to reach a point where you’re at or near the benchmark standard in all key areas. The task now becomes more tactical – it is to maintain the overall position and to focus on making improvements in the few areas where things aren’t as good as you’d like them to be.

We frequently find that clients can become dispirited when they can’t keep on pushing scores up – even when they are already at very high levels. The most effective and successful organisations can be most affected. In these cases it’s our job to help the executives concerned to keep sight of the wood for the trees. One of the best ways to do this is to map engagement for the whole organisation on a single chart. We use a bubble chart. This way it’s possible to plot progress towards overall engagement and at the same time see which parts of the business are doing best and least well.

The task then becomes one of praising the best managers and their teams and finding ways to help the more needy areas. Always review the survey data carefully. Identify strengths and weaknesses and agree realistic targets for improvement with those concerned.

It calls for a dogged and determined approach. But it can be done. We see it year in and year out. These really great organisations continue to improve, little by little.

So the days of the huge leaps forward are over. Continuous improvement takes over. Employee engagement surveys still provide the key way to measure progress.